Zimmerman Case Goes to Jury, With Defense Urging It to Remove Emotion

George Zimmerman wiped sweat from his face shortly after arriving in the courtroom on Friday.Credit
Pool photo by Joe Burbank

SANFORD, Fla. — In his three-hour closing argument on Friday, a lawyer for George Zimmerman said that his client was guilty only of protecting his own life when he fatally shot Trayvon Martin, and he chastised the prosecution as having filled jurors’ heads with guesswork, not evidence.

Mark O’Mara, one of Mr. Zimmerman’s lawyers, told the jury that the prosecution had provided so little evidence of second-degree murder, the main charge, that he wished the verdict form contained three choices: “guilty, not guilty, and completely innocent, because I would ask you to check that one.”

After hearing three weeks of testimony inside the Seminole County courthouse, the jury of six women — five white and one Hispanic — began deliberations at 2:29 p.m. They adjourned at 6 p.m. and were to resume their work at 9 a.m. on Saturday.

They are to decide whether Mr. Zimmerman is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of second-degree murder or of the lesser charge of manslaughter.

If jurors agree it was self-defense, Mr. Zimmerman will be found not guilty.

Mr. Martin, 17, a unarmed black youth who was walking in the rain to a house where he was staying, was shot in the heart by Mr. Zimmerman. Mr. Zimmerman, then 28 and a neighborhood watch volunteer, said that Mr. Martin attacked him and that, fearing for his life, he shot the teenager. There were no witnesses to the shooting, which took place in darkness, shortly after 7 p.m. on Feb. 26, 2012. A six-week delay in charging Mr. Zimmerman stirred outrage, and civil rights leaders led marches in Sanford, Miami and elsewhere around the country.

As he spoke to the jury on Friday, Mr. O’Mara held up the defense’s most compelling evidence in the case: photographs of Mr. Zimmerman’s injured head and nose. And Mr. O’Mara walked the jury through an array of testimony and physical evidence suggesting Mr. Martin was on top during the struggle, which is consistent with Mr. Zimmerman’s account to the police.

But above all, Mr. O’Mara emphasized to jurors that a claim of self-defense does not require any injuries, only a reasonable fear of great bodily harm.

“No injuries are necessary to respond with deadly force,” Mr. O’Mara said. “Not a cut on a finger. The statute is clear. It requires a reasonable fear of bodily harm.”

The injuries, he said, were “icing on the cake.”

Soon after, on the floor in front of the jury, Mr. O’Mara placed a slab of concrete, similar to the pavement on which Mr. Martin repeatedly struck Mr. Zimmerman’s head, he said.

“That is not an unarmed teenager with nothing but Skittles trying to get home,” he said of Mr. Martin. Then he added, referring to the slab of concrete, “The suggestion by the state that that’s not a weapon, that that can’t hurt somebody, that that can’t cause great bodily harm, is disgusting.”

It was not Mr. Zimmerman who was the aggressor, he said. It was Mr. Martin.

“You can’t look at those pictures and say that what was visited upon George Zimmerman was not evidence of ill will, spite and hatred,” Mr. O’Mara said, using legal terms that apply to the second-degree murder charge. Had Mr. Martin survived and been shot through the hip, Mr. O’Mara said, “he would have been charged with aggravated battery, two counts.”

But during the state’s rebuttal argument, a prosecutor, John Guy, asked jurors to use their common sense.

In his heart, he said, Mr. Zimmerman harbored hatred and ill will toward Mr. Martin. To Mr. Zimmerman, Mr. Martin was not a teenager with Skittles in his pocket, chatting with his friend on the telephone, his hooded shirt shielding him from the rain. He was just another criminal casing the neighborhood, Mr. Guy said.

Mr. Zimmerman’s choices, he said, spoke volumes about his mind-set: He got out of his car with a gun on his hip; he disregarded a police dispatcher’s advice not to follow Mr. Martin. And then he chased the teenager as he headed home, setting off the fight that led to Mr. Martin’s death.

Photo

Demonstrators from the New Black Panthers Party protested outside the courthouse to demand that Mr. Zimmerman be convicted of murder and not manslaughter.

Credit
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

“That child had every right to do what he was doing, walking home,” Mr. Guy said. That child had every right to be afraid of a strange man following him, first in his car and then on foot. And did that child not have the right to defend himself from that strange man?”

Mr. Guy also underscored, as the chief prosecutor had done the day before, inconsistencies in Mr. Zimmerman’s statements to the police and in a television interview with Sean Hannity. He lied, Mr. Guy said, and exaggerated. How could Mr. Zimmerman’s skull have hit concrete 25 times, as he said, and sustain so few injuries? How could Mr. Martin have grabbed the gun, Mr. Guy asked, and not left any DNA on it?

“Why did he have to lie if he had done nothing wrong?” Mr. Guy asked.

Then he mocked Mr. Zimmerman for telling Mr. Hannity that the events had been part of “God’s plan.”

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As for the gun, he asked how Mr. Zimmerman could have grabbed it while being straddled by Mr. Martin unless Mr. Martin was getting up and trying to get away.

Yet, the prosecution’s case appeared to rely more on emotion than on evidence. Often, prosecutors raised more questions than answers. By trial’s end, it remained unclear how the confrontation actually began, legal experts said.

This is the doubt that Mr. O’Mara tried to capitalize on during his closing argument.

“They are supposed to use words like ‘certainty’ and ‘definite,’ ‘without question,’ ‘beyond a reasonable doubt,’ ” Mr. O’Mara said in a professorial tone. He continued, “What aren’t good words for prosecutors are ‘maybe’, ‘what if’, ‘I hope so,’ ‘you figure it out.’ ”

Mr. O’Mara urged the jury not to “fill in gaps” or “connect the dots” for the prosecution, despite their emotions, because Mr. Zimmerman’s freedom was at stake.

“It is a tragedy, truly, but you can’t allow sympathy to feed into it,” Mr. O’Mara said.

To find Mr. Zimmerman guilty of second-degree murder, jurors must agree that he shot Mr. Martin out of ill will, hatred, spite or an evil intent, a “depraved mind.” That charge carries up to a life sentence.

Manslaughter is a lower bar, one that could prove more appealing to a jury and more worrisome to the defense. Prosecutors must show only that Mr. Zimmerman killed without lawful justification. If a weapon is used, it could draw a maximum of 30 years in prison.

The defense believed that it benefited from many prosecution witnesses. Mr. O’Mara repeatedly reminded the jury of the “reasonable doubt” defense lawyers raised during the trial and the assumptions prosecutors made.

There is “not a shred of evidence,” he said, that Mr. Zimmerman was not returning to his car after a police dispatcher suggested he not follow Mr. Martin, Mr. O’Mara said. The police dispatcher who was on the phone that night with Mr. Zimmerman when he used profanities testified that nothing the defendant said made him think he was full of hatred.

The neighbor with the closest view of the struggle said the man with red or light clothing was on the bottom (Mr. Zimmerman wore red). And a prominent forensic pathologist who is an expert on gunshot wounds said Mr. Martin was leaning over Mr. Zimmerman when he was shot.

The mere act of following someone, Mr. O’Mara said, “is not an unlawful activity.”As for the discrepancies in his client’s statements: “If you lie, it’s normally with the intent to deceive,” Mr. O’Mara said. “If George Zimmerman had the intent to deceive, why would he give six statements?”

As Mr. Zimmerman sat, listening with a blank expression, Mr. O’Mara made one final request to the jury as it prepared to deliberate his client’s future.

“Let him go back,” he said of Mr. Zimmerman, “and get back to his life.”

A version of this article appears in print on July 13, 2013, on Page A9 of the New York edition with the headline: Zimmerman Case Goes to Jury, With Defense Urging It to Remove Emotion. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe